Amity, Antagonism and Appeasement: Anglo-German Relations, 1871-1945

The Modern Records Centre's collections contain sources on Britain's relationship with Germany from c.1914 onwards. Most of the archives focus on the political, economic and diplomatic relationships between the countries, but we also hold some more personal or informal documents.

= This symbol after a link means that it links to catalogue descriptions of the documents (including the reference numbers which will help you to order up the original documents at the MRC).

= This symbol after a link means that it links to digitised copies of the documents.

‘The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism’: Relations under Wilhelm II

Overview:

The MRC has only a small amount of (mostly published) material regarding the pre-1914 relationship between Britain and Germany.

Article reprinted from The Star, which attacks Lord Northcliffe for issuing a pamphlet entitled 'Scaremongerings from the 'Daily Mail,' 1896-1914' - a selective collection of articles prophesying war with Germany - and for attacking Liberal newspapers for their coverage over the same period. It also accuses Northcliffe of warmongering, Jingoism and belittling the British army in the run up to the First World War.

‘The Crisis of the Anglo-German Antagonism’? The First World War

Overview:

The MRC's sources on the First World War period are limited, and in most cases relate to experiences on the British home front. We do however have a small amount of material on the portrayal of Germany in Britain, the experiences of servicemen, and opposition to the war.

To get a general idea of the type of material that we hold for this period, have a look at our First World War 100 digital collection - 100 digitised documents on the conflict, including material on military service, the home front, pacifism and protest, the role of women, and demobilisation and recovery

Selected collections:

Archives of the National Union of Seamen

During the First World War, the National Sailors and Firemen's Union (later the National Union of Seamen) made strong attacks on both German naval policy (particularly the submarine campaign) and Germans in general.

The Seaman, newspaper of the NSFU / NUS, included regular anti-German articles during the First World War

The issue of the newspaper for 21 May 1915 has been digitised - this includes comment on the sinking of the Lusitania and concerns over alleged German agents in the UK

Selected sources:

Collections of cartoons by Will Dyson, taken from the left-wing newspaper The Herald. Most focus on the home front, including criticisms of 'Prussianism' in Britain. Dyson spent part of the First World War on the Western Front as a war artist.

The correspondence includes some references to Young's views on the German management of the war. Two letters have been digitised: 25 April 1917 and 1 June 1918 (you can read a typed transcript by choosing the 'text' option)

Text of speech made by Company-Sergeant-Major Franklin, M.C., to the Inns of Court Officers’ Training Corps on 19 July 1918, in which he portrays German soldiers as sub-human and describes the "delightful feeling" of killing them at close quarters with the bayonet.

Making Peace: Versailles and German Democracy

Overview:

Two distinct views on the post-war reconstruction of Europe can be seen in the archives of the Federation of British Industries (representing the interests of British employers) and the archives of the Trades Union Congress (reflecting the views of the British and international labour movements).

Selected sources:

Trades Union Congress file on the Treaty of Versailles and debates over its revision. Includes material relating to the responses of both the British and broader international labour movement to disarmament and reparations. Several items in the file have been digitised:

Federation of British Industries minutes, recording views of British business representatives on the proposed payment of indemnities or reparations by Germany and representation of British industry at the peace conference.

The British in Germany: Diplomats, Occupiers and Enforcers of the Treaty

and

From the Ruhr Crisis to the ‘Locarno Spirit’: Normalising relations in the mid-1920s

Overview:

MRC sources on the relationship between Britain and Germany during the 1920s relate mostly to trade and economic relations (through the archives of the Federation of British Industries) and to the relationship between sections of the international labour movement (through the archives of the Trades Union Congress and other trade unions).

Selected sources:

Germany - report by Mr Locock, representative of the Federation of British Industries, of a visit to the Occupied Territories, with prospects for trade, 1919

Descriptive report by members of a deputation from the Transport and General Workers Union on conditions in the Ruhr and the effects of reparations. It also includes comment on conditions in the British occupied areas of the Rhineland.

Report written for the Federation of British Industries following a visit of FBI representatives to Germany. It includes analysis of different aspects of the German economy and industrial production following the severe financial crisis in 1925, and concludes that "the worst is now over".

‘Germany Wants to See You’: Travel and Tourism in the 1920s and 30s

Overview:

The Modern Records Centre holds the National Cycle Archive, a collection which includes descriptions and photographs of cycling tours or holidays to Germany during the 1920s and 1930s. Cycling journals in this collection, such as Cycling, will include illustrated articles about foreign tours.

A small number of additional documents relating to travel and tourism are included in the archives of trade unions (including reports of fraternal delegations between the two countries during the 1920s and early 1930s) and individuals.

Selected sources:

Small file of letters sent to the British trade unionist Percy Collick from Elizabeth, Harry and Nils Grottewitz in Berlin-Friedenau, and Leopold Czerny in Vienna. Collick had met the correspondents whilst visiting Germany and Austria in the early 1920s. Subjects discussed include politics (including 1923 elections in Austria and UK), living conditions in Germany and Austria after the First World War, industrial relations, the international situation, benefits of Esperanto, and the correspondents' personal circumstances.

Series of illustrated articles in the journal of the Railway Clerks' Association, reporting on a British and Irish football team's tour of Germany organised under the banner of "Sport and Peace versus War".

Correspondence, etc., written by Richard Crossman during visits to Germany in his 20s:

Travel journal of David Hamilton. It describes his cycling tour of Germany shortly after Hitler came to power, and includes references to the new regime, as well as more general descriptions of scenery and towns.

Pamphlet which uses the style of a travel brochure to highlight attacks on foreign visitors in Germany in 1933-4. It was produced by the printer of the Trades Union Congress, though the TUC is not explicitly named in the publication.

The author worked for the left-wing newspaper the Daily Herald and had visited Germany in a personal capacity. The account was sent to the Trades Union Congress to show "how the Nazis seek to influence English students".

Typescript description of cycling tour. As well as seeing the sights, the author was briefly arrested for taking photographs in the 'wrong' place.

Two innocents abroad: an account of a tour by tandem bicycle in Germany in late May, early June 1938, by Les and Jess Brown

Later typescript description of the couple's first foreign tour. It includes comment on border restrictions, awkwardness when Germans thought that Jess (with short hair and shorts) was male, encounters with members of the Hitler Youth, and problems over taking photographs.

Wandering wheels: photographs taken during a tour of Holland, Germany and Czechoslovakia during the 1930s (Nazi insignia on buildings is visible in some photographs)

Selected sources:

Series of articles in the journal of the Railway Clerks' Association, reporting on a German football tour of Britain and a return tour by a British and Irish football team to Germany, organised under the banner of "Sport and Peace versus War".

Publicity material for London exhibition of the work of artists condemned as 'degenerate' in Germany.

Changing Perceptions of National Socialism, 1929-37

Overview:

Unsurprisingly, as left-wing political opponents and trade unionists were early targets of the National Socialists in Germany, the majority of our archival sources strongly oppose the Nazis from the start. Whilst most sources are hostile, they do however contain differing views on the nature and likely longevity of the Nazi regime.

The archives of Richard Crossman

Richard Crossman made two sets of broadcasts on political and social conditions in Nazi Germany for the BBC - one series in 1934, whilst he was actually in Germany, and another in 1939-1942, whilst working for the Political Warfare Executive (i.e psychological warfare) during the Second World War. Some themes are revisited in both sets of broadcasts, including the Night of the Long Knives, which occured whilst Crossman was in Germany. Transcripts of the radio broadcasts are available online.

It includes information about group visits to Germany to enquire "into the fundamental principles underlying the National Socialist Revolution in Germany", and was circulated by Amy Buller, Warden of the University of Liverpool, one of the group organisers.

Appeasement

Overview:

Collections at the MRC contain a range of views on appeasement, including archives relating to attempts to influence the British government through an appeal for intervention by one of Hitler's German opponents, the support of a committed pacifist to the policy of appeasement, and documents relating to the organisation of protests against the Munich Agreement.

Selected collections:

The archives of Arthur Primrose Young

A.P. Young, a works manager at British Thomson-Houston in Rugby, met with Dr Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, former Mayor of Leipzig, and a conservative opponent of the Nazis (aka 'X'), in 1938-9. The 'X' Documents , which Young produced as a result of his discussions with Goerdeler, called for determined and decisive action by Britain, but did not make headway at the highest levels in 1938-9. Goerdeler was executed in 1945 for his role in the 1944 bomb plot against Hitler.

The archives of the Trades Union Congress

The TUC archives include a series of files relating to Czechoslovakia, including files on the international situation around the time of the Munich Agreement (including pamphlets which outline the Labour Party's response), organisation of a public protest meeting against appeasement following the Munich Agreement, and the reception of refugees in Britain.

The archives of Marjory Allen, Lady Allen of Hurtwood

Marjory Allen was a landscape architect, campaigner for pre-school education and promoter of child welfare. Lady Allen's archives include material relating to her husband's championing of appeasement with Germany during the 1930s. Clifford Allen condemned Nazi brutality and anti-semitism, but opposed military action due to his strong pacifist beliefs (he was three times imprisoned as a conscientious objector during the First World War).

The Parting of the Ways? The Second World War

Overview:

The majority of Second World War material in the MRC's collections relates to the British home front. We do however have some sources on German refugees and exiled political groups in Britain, and the wartime debates on the "German question" (i.e. was Germany inherently aggressive?) and how the country should be treated once the war was over.

Selected sources:

Germans in Britain: Internment and refugees

Two Trades Union Congress files on "Aliens and internment", including ephemera and correspondence (some relating to individual cases), 1940-1943

Social Democratic Party, file on German Social Democrats in Britain from the archives of the Trades Union Congress, 1939-1942

'Vansittartism':

Sir Robert Vansittart took a strong anti-German line, arguing that Hitler was a reflection of the inherent aggression of Germans as a whole. The MRC holds several publications relating to the wartime argument over 'Vansittartism', together with some ephemera from groups which promoted 'Vansittartism' or held similar anti-German views.

Trades Union Congress file on the post-war treatment of Germany, 1939-1946, including text of speech by Eleonora Tennant on Lord Vansittart (arguing that not only was Vansittart not sufficiently anti-German, he was actually a German spy), and documents from and about the 'Never Again' and 'Face the Facts' Associations, including leaflets which summarise their aims and objectives.

Anglo-German Relations since World War II

Overview:

Archives at the MRC include material relating to the Allied occupation of Germany (particularly in the British zone), the Allied policy of denazification, a British campaigner's response to post-war conditions in Germany, post-war trade and economic relations, and the relationship between the organised labour movements of Britain and (mostly) West Germany.

Selected collections:

The archives of Richard Crossman

Richard Crossman returned to Germany, a country he had visited during the 1920s and 1930s, with the Psychological Warfare Division of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in 1944-1945. His archives include documents about the work of the Psychological Warfare Division during the early period of the Allied occupation of Germany, including reports of interviews with / interrogations of Germans, reports on journeys by PWD officers within occupied Germany, and the results of a February 1945 opinion poll amongst German prisoners of war on 'Expectations of Anglo-American occupation of Germany'

Crossman's archives also include a diary kept during May 1945, whilst in Germany, including Crossman's comments on his return to Frankfurt, a city he had lived in during 1930, observations on meetings with German civilians, and a description of Dachau concentration camp, shortly after liberation

The archives of Victor Gollancz, publisher

Gollancz was a leading British advocate of reconciliation with Germany after the Second World War. His archives include: